Enhanced Backup Module?

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 8:24 am

Since I know PHP-Nuke can send e-mail for authorization and it can backup the SQL database, can someone create a module for the Admin CP that can automatically backup the SQL database and e-mail it on whatever specified time/date?

I think it would be a highly used addition and whoever develops it could make quite a bit from "donations" for this.

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6432

There are 2 approaches for this - both have already been developed, but I don't have the particulars handy right now.

The obvious approach is a scheduled / CRON job. The problem (from a developer's perspective, anyway) with this approach is that it's specific to the operating system.

The other approach is to have a visitor trigger the job - but this requires visitors (which are notoriously inconsistent) Of course, a webmaster could schedule his PC to load a special page on the site, kicking off the backup.

The ideal solution (the best of both approaches) would require an enhancement to the PHP language that would allow OS-independent scheduling of PHP scripts. This would be useful not only for backups, but also for off-peak newsletter distribution, event reminder / notifications, and probably lots of other time-dependent functions. I spoke with a commercial PHP application developer who claimed his company was working with PHP on this type of enhancement. It would obviously enable PHP to support many new applications in addition to enhancing existing applications. Until then, we still have 2 approaches... I'll see if I can find the alternatives I referred to earlier and post some details here.

Worker Joined: Apr 14, 2004 Posts: 193

Actually, what youre asking for is already available. I've been experimenting with one available at http://s88357202.onlinehome.us/ called Advanced Nuke Backup.

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:10 pm

Here's some stuff I found last September:

MySQL database backup - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - this generates an SQL file for one or more MySQL databases, supports email / FTP, Windows AT / Linux-Unix CRON scheduling

phpMySQLAutoBackup - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - emails a GZIP compressed MySQL database backup - not sure if it supports multiple databases, but requires scheduling (see phpjobscheduler below)

phpMyBackup - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - stores locally or FTPs a backup of one or more MySQL databases, has import capability, not sure if it can be scheduled

cronbackup - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - backup and restore one MySQL database and email, and can be scheduled.

PHP Website Backup - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - backup and restore website files to local directory, not sure if it can be scheduled

CZDB Site Admin Backup & Optimize Module - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - enhancement to the standard PHP-Nuke backup function. Does not appear to be able to be scheduled. Similar functions exist in NukeSentinel for optimizing, repairing, etc. tables.

PHP-Nuke Auto-Backup Utility - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - backups up the current PHP-Nuke MySQL database on Linux servers and stores locally or sends via [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - is a job scheduler written in PHP and requires MySQL, but must be triggered by visitors (the second approach in my post above).

pseudo-cron - [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] - similar to phpjobscheduler

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:23 pm

Thanks, Dean! Advanced Nuke Backup came out after I searched. It appears to have a nice administration capability, and the ability to backup the current Nuke database and to send it via email. The features mention using it to back up site files, but I couldn't see how that works in the code (unless it means specific tables in the database). It does require visitors to the site, but could be scheduled just by opening the main url / index.php from CRON or the Windows scheduler.

[EDIT] The file backup feature is in the admin function, not in the automatic backup. Cool...

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:29 pm

Yea, its such a simple installation and administration is straightforward without the need for access to cron jobs. The guys a genius!

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 7:37 pm

dean wrote:

Actually, what youre asking for is already available. I've been experimenting with one available at http://s88357202.onlinehome.us/ called Advanced Nuke Backup.

I tried installing that and it errored out when I was trying to enter the backup username and password.

Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:17 am

If you check the support forums at that site you will see that one of the users talked about manually creating and chmodding the backup folder prior to installing the database. I had to do this as well and afterwards completed the installation. Also, the author of the script posted a revision of the core file edit to make the script compatible with other modules.

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:38 pm

Okay, I had to use a database backup that was from what Advanced Backup made and it was quite messed up. It added a lot of information that didn't need to be there. I had to edit the entire database to get it to take correctly.

Regular Joined: Mar 14, 2005 Posts: 91

jonmcc33 wrote:

Okay, I had to use a database backup that was from what Advanced Backup made and it was quite messed up. It added a lot of information that didn't need to be there. I had to edit the entire database to get it to take correctly.

I disagree, myself and many others have successfully used db and file backups successfully. Maybe you didn't check to see if there were any updates? Maybe you didn't install it correctly? I have never had any complaints at my site about the db not taking and it would have been nice if you asked me about it at my site before bashing it here. You are even a Member of my site Rolling Eyes

dean wrote:

Yea, its such a simple installation and administration is straightforward without the need for access to cron jobs. The guys a genius!

Wow! Thanks for your kind words dean.

Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:48 pm

gotcha wrote:

I disagree, myself and many others have successfully used db and file backups successfully. Maybe you didn't check to see if there were any updates? Maybe you didn't install it correctly? I have never had any complaints at my site about the db not taking and it would have been nice if you asked me about it at my site before bashing it here. You are even a Member of my site Rolling Eyes

I don't care if you disagree because I got the error whether you like it or not. I tried to use phpMyAdmin 2.5.3 to upload the DB file and it gave me an error. So I tried to copy and paste just a few tables at a time and they all gave me errors.

I used a backup that I had done with the regular PHP-Nuke backup and it worked fine.

Also, I had a problem that it would do a backup every hour even though I told it to do it daily (ie 24 hours). Then it wouldn't backup for a few days in a row. After that for some reason it would make 10 backups in a row in the same hour. I installed it exactly as your instructions said so.

I'm not really bashing it per se so chill yer grill. I think you have enough bug reports in your forums to show whether it works or not. I would post my SQL database here but I have too much information in it. Thanks though, just not my cup of tea.

Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 11:35 pm

Wow, there you go again, trying to steer people away.

Quote:

I think you have enough bug reports in your forums to show whether it works or not.

Bug reports are a part of every script, and most result from user error. You would think if it was a problem with the script that more people would report it. If you download any nuke script, you should be prepared to check for updates right? And if you did, you would know that alot of these bugs have been resolved. RTFM

Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:52 am

gotcha wrote:

Bug reports are a part of every script, and most result from user error. You would think if it was a problem with the script that more people would report it. If you download any nuke script, you should be prepared to check for updates right? And if you did, you would know that alot of these bugs have been resolved. RTFM

After having an issue restoring my website with the backup that your module made I decided against using it again and that would sort of prevent any updates. Thanks!

If your code works now and the bugs have been fixed then obviously you can ignore my statements regarding your code, right?